She Couldn't Afford Rental Real Estate at 25, So She Built a 50-Car Rental Fleet Instead

Saimah Chaudhry built a car-rental business out of a single underused Smartcar after learning about car-sharing from a client in 2015, she told Business Insider. Chaudhry, now cofounder and chief operating officer of EV rental platform Zevo, said she first heard about the concept when an out-of-town client mentioned renting a BMW through Relay Rides, the app that later became Turo.

She listed her own Smartcar on a whim, and a UCLA grad student booked it for three months; after that, she said, the car was essentially always rented. She leased and listed two more Smartcars because they were cheap at the time. Chaudhry was about 25 and said she couldn't afford to buy real estate to break into the short-term rental market, so cars became her alternative.

That initial fleet eventually grew to more than 50 vehicles, which she said brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Five years ago, she used that experience to launch Zevo, a rental platform focused specifically on electric vehicles.